Mission Design Engineer

Your mission

As a Mission Design Engineer, you will play a key role in helping design the constellations and space missions of tomorrow, ensuring the long-term sustainability of space activities by developing innovative solutions and helping customers design their missions. You will work across various teams, projects, and mission phases of a spacecrafts lifetime. With your technical expertise and problem-solving skills, you will design, analyze, and optimize systems that comply with international space debris guidelines and enhance the safety of our satellite operations.
Furthermore, by assessing mission designs, propulsion systems, and end-of-life disposal strategies, you will identify hidden risks and optimization opportunities to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best practices. Your work will directly contribute to making space operations more sustainable and efficient. Last but not least while you should have a strong passion for space engineering, you should also be enthusiastic about software development as a regular part of your job.

Your tasks and responsibilities

• Perform mission design optimization, mission analysis and debris mitigation compliance analyses for commercial and governmental customers.
• Develop products, such as, software for our mission design and compliance product that models the space environment and subsequently performs analyses.
• Participate in writing proposals for the European Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
• Take responsibility for work packages as part of projects, including implementation, analyses and documentation efforts.

Your profile

Must-haves:

• You have an academic degree (M.Sc.) in Aerospace Engineering, Space Engineering Applied Mathematics or similar and have prior work experience in the field of mission design, space debris mitigation, satellite operations
• 3+ years work experience in commercial space industry.
• You have software development experience in scientific programming using Fortran, Python and GitLab
• Experience in mission design and simulation, e.g. coverage and revisit time analysis.
• Strong communication skills in English; other languages, including German, are a plus.
• You hold a valid working permit for Germany/EU.

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience with the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines and standards such as the ESSB-ST-U-007.
• Experienced with requirements from ECSS-E-ST-40C, Space engineering – Software: Tailoring for Ground Segment Systems and ECSS-Q-ST-80C, Space Product Assurance: Tailoring for Ground Segment Systems
• Experience using ESA’s DRAMA and MASTER software suite or other space domain analysis tools like STK.
• Familiarity with software development and product development tools such as Jira, GitLab/git, confluence etc.

Why us?

• With a lean hierarchy and small working groups, you define your own way of work including flexible work hours.
• Work on groundbreaking space sustainability challenges with a team of top-tier engineers and scientists.
• After your on-boarding time in Braunschweig, you can choose between staying in our office, working remote (within Germany) or a hybrid approach.
• Enjoy technical freedom. Influence system architecture, research methodologies, and data integration approaches.
• Grow continuously with access to training budgets, industry conferences, and networking opportunities.
• Be part of a strong engineering culture, with regular knowledge-sharing sessions, technical deep dives, and innovation sprints.
• Great team spirit, with company-wide events such as monthly all-hands lunches, and social activities like laser tag, dinners, and team-building outings.

About us

OKAPI:Orbits is at the forefront of space sustainability, addressing some of the most pressing challenges of the space industry: the growing problem of crowded orbital regimes, and the need for more efficient satellite operations. We're providing end-to-end solutions that help various space industry players cover their Space Situation Awareness (SSA), and Space Traffic Management and Coordination (STM & STC) needs. We are committed to safeguarding space missions and access to space for all humanity. Join us on our mission.

Last but not least, we would like to share with you that research shows that women are less likely to apply for a position unless they meet 100% of the listed requirements.
Please know that if it’s your case — but you are passionate about space technology, building reliable software, and contributing to a more sustainable space environment — we strongly encourage you to apply.
OKAPI:Orbits already brings together a highly diverse team, and we actively continue to strengthen this diversity which allows us to achieve higher performance and drive innovation.